A woman in Brazil who received a womb transplanted from a dead donor has given birth to a healthbaby girl, in the first successful case of its kind, doctors reported. The woman had been born with a rare genetic condition that left her without a uterus, known as Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome, but she was otherwise healthy.

The transplant womb was taken from a mother-of-three who had died from bleeding on the brain.

The case involved connecting veins from the donor uterus with the then-32-year-old's recipient's veins, as well as linking arteries, ligaments and vaginal canals. According to researchers the woman became pregnant seven months after the transplant through in-vitro fertilisation (IVF). The baby was born by cesarean section between 34 and 36 weeks at the Hospital das Clinicas, University of Sao Paulo School of Medicine.

While babies born from live donor uterus transplants have been done almost a dozen times before, including once in 2017 at Baylor Scott & White Hospital in Dallas, this birth marks the first time doctors have been able to remove the uterus from a recently deceased donor and have it result in a live birth. The possibility of successful pregnancies using deceased donors expands the possibilities for fertility.

Previously, there have been 10 other uterus transplants from dead donors attempted in the United States, Czech Republic and Turkey, but this is the first to result in a live birth.

However, he cautioned: "Uterine transplantation is a novel technique and should be regarded as experimental". The mother, whose uterus was removed in the same surgical procedure, is also healthy, the study added. The demonstrated success of a procedure involving a deceased donor, he says, may spare live donors from undergoing risky procedures, and make transplants possible for far more women.

Part of the challenge in transplanting a uterus from a deceased donor is that the process - obtaining an organ, matching it to a recipient based on blood type and other qualities, and completing the operation - can take time.

Unlike most transplantation surgeries "this is not a matter of life and death but more to satisfy a woman's desire to carry a child", Professor Salamonsen said.

About six weeks later, she started having periods. He traveled to Sweden to learn from doctors there who have the most experience with uterine transplantation.

Five months before the transplant, the recipient had sixteen eggs from her own functional ovaries removed.

The mother and baby were discharged from the hospital three days after birth. Implantation of the eggs occurred seven months after the transplant, the researchers said.

"There are still lots of things we don't understand about pregnancies, like how embryos implant", said Cesar Diaz, who co-authored an accompanying commentary in the journal. The drugs have triggered pregnancy complications in some of the Swedish patients, including kidney problems and preeclampsia, she notes. At the age of 7 months and 20 days, the baby continued to breastfeed and weighed 15 pounds, 14 ounces.

To date, 39 womb transplants from live donors have been performed, resulting in the birth of 11 babies, according to BBC News.